Dammed If I Do, Dammed If I Don't
by CHAILYN
Summary: Inspired by the Promo for All Dogs Go To Heaven. Sam's not sure what he feels, buts he'd tired of defending himself. They've both changed since the beginning.  Rated M for language.


**Dammed If I Do, Dammed If I Don't **

_Summary: Inspired by the Promo for All Dogs Go To Heaven. Sam's not sure what he feels, buts he'd tired of defending himself. They've both changed since the beginning._

_Note: Oh, I know that I've been out of the game for awhile, but I've been so uninspired and blah feeling about things…I'm feeling much better since You Can't Handle The Truth, but anyways…that's my half assed excuse for all the partially finished fic that I have floating around right now. On a semi-related note, does anyone else find it impossible to go around the fan-boards and youtube? I'm sick and tired of the boys being pitted against one another, and I don't understand these remarks about Jared's acting being half-assed-I think he's quite terrific this season and once again I don't understand all this anger over some of the Dean focused story-lines. I'm rambling, and completely nonsensical here, but I think it could be much worse. If I was going to have some wishes granted, I'd just like to see the problems in their relationship addressed just so that they could at least get back on the road to some reconciliation since they both obviously have their problems. Eh…stopping now. I didn't realize I went so long, and if anyone is still reading, thank you you're too kind, and I don't own anything. Thank you for reading._

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_I know that it's a wonderful world, but I can't feel it right now_

_While I thought that I was doing well, but I just want to cry now_

_-Wonderful World; James Morrison_

It's tiring-exhausting, really-to keep defending himself.

With fleeting-amusement?-maybe its amusement; when anything that so much as resembles an emotion he checks with himself to see if its sincere or wishful thinking yet again.

If he listens to what Cas has to say, that's one hundred percent impossible. According to Castiel…he doesn't feel a thing. He did beg to differ, however. Sam sure as fuck felt the angel rooting around in his chest cavity like a little kid searching for the last cookie in the cookie jar.

If he could actually sleep Sam figures, he would be having some pretty awesome nightmares about that, some really great sleepless nights too.

But there's no treatment X to replace his soul, not as far as Cas knows, and they're above and beyond Bobby's pay grade, as he so keeps reiterating every time Dean calls him for an answer and to object to how he's lost his Sam-ness.

Sam doesn't know what it is, but if he could look at Castiel without wanting to hurl the contents of his stomach, he could agree that it was an interesting philosophical question. Maybe he was lying to Dean when he said he was still himself. He still felt like himself, but different. Sort of like his freshmen year at Stanford where he spent a night drinking double jack and coke.

There's no Plan B here to map out a healthy relationship with Dean again. But has there ever been? He doesn't want anything more than to finally put things right again. He's sick and tired of them missing every time. Each time they get the chance to put things right, it goes to hell.

And by it-he meant them.

He doesn't _like_ being a demon's bitch any more than Dean, but at this point, he doesn't see that they really have much of an option. Crowley is the only one of them that knows something about anything. They're fucked, and Dean's pissed.

Well fuck that, he's pissed too, or at least what he's feeling seems like it could pass for pissed. Feelings or not, the grand scheme of this sucks. It really is just about standard that Dean would get pulled out of the pit completely intact and without as much as a-okay, to be fair, Castiel did leave his mark…

Sam would take touched by an angel any day over being the soulless bastard that apparently Dean contemplates killing (or did, at the very least.)

He's constantly scrounging for memories of things that he doesn't even think Dean remembers until he brings it up. Anything really, anything that will convince Dean that underneath it all, he's still the same pain in the ass little brother.

Suzy Heizer. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel for that one, but his mind was on the case. He compartmentalizes better without a soul.

Contrary to what Dean might think, hunting is important to him. Dean is important to him.

The difference, about not having a soul, is the things that hurt. The things that all but bled him dry, the things that killed him and tore about his insides like someone took to them with shards of glass, was that he just didn't feel them.

He tried too, in the beginning. When he realized how numb he had become, the way that a part of him just felt empty, he tried to force himself to feel. He went to Palo Alto, he went home to Lawrence, he read his favorite books and listened to his favorite music, he read the journal that he had kept for years on the sly.

Nothing.

He still likes Coldplay and Radiohead. They're great, really. The Brothers Karamazov is still an amazing book, and everyone should read it, but it doesn't fill him with anything. He just notices once he's done that eighteen hours has passed.

It felt like a waste of time when he could have been finding a job, and doing _something_.

In a burst of desperation a couple months after he left Dean in his new life, and he's returned and _something isn't right; _he tries thinking of Jess. He goes to her gravesite, he looks at her picture, and he thinks that she loved him so much, he'd loved her too.

He can't feel anything, not even guilt because he didn't bring flowers.

Something is definitely wrong, but he knew that after three days passed and after copious amounts of sleeping aids, he still couldn't sleep.

_Suzy Heizer_. He almost smiles when he tells Dean about her. He sat next to her in Biology. It was his freshman year at some school in Utah and every time that she leaned across the table to look in the microscope he thought he was going to die.

Even Dean agreed, she had a better rack than any senior girl, and he spent the better path of their two months there trying to get a date with her. He'd been pissed, and they didn't talk for weeks.

It didn't matter in the end, she was a Mormon and wouldn't date either of them anyways.

He feels a moment of relief when Dean finally shuts up for a minute. He's getting a reprieve from the constant attacks.

There isn't much that he can think of to convince Dean that he's still himself. Sometimes he can hardly convince himself that he is still the same person. But he forgets who he's weighing this new him against. The Sam of six years ago? He wasn't even that person before he went to hell.

They've both changed over six years. He's sure that even Dean looks in the mirror and sees a different person. Everything has changed.

It makes him wonder, what, if anything will getting his soul back, change? He can tell that Dean thinks the problems between them are all about that; about his soul, or lack thereof.

But things have been wrong between them for awhile, for too long they've been letting things go, they've been burying their feelings down deep and pretending. Something's going to have to give, or they're both going to explode.


End file.
